April 24, 2017

CELL and the True Terror of Technology

You
do realize the zombie
apocalypse has already begun, don't you? For all I know, you may
already be one of them.

I don't own a cell phone. I used to
have one, an old fashioned flip phone given to me for Christmas one year. I
think I used it three or four times during the first few months
before retiring it to my office drawer, where it stayed for
several years. As someone who’s simply not important enough to be
available 24/7 (none of us are), I’ve just never needed one. I
still don’t.

While preparing to move not too long ago, we
decided to purge much of the crap we'd collected over time, either
donating it to Goodwill, recycling it or throwing it away. My phone
ended up in one of those purge piles. My two daughters were somewhat
amused when they saw this ancient artifact, which required the
supreme physical effort of flipping it open and actually punching in
a phone number. You couldn't use it to text or send emojis in lieu of
actual words and sentences. Life was hell back in them olden
days.

To this day, I refuse to carry a cell phone, arguably
the worst thing to violate society since Fox News. That probably
makes me sound like a cranky old curmudgeon who resents and fears
advancing technology. Actually, nothing could be further from the
truth. I depend on my computer, personally and professionally, on a
daily basis. I love playing games and socializing on Twitter or
Facebook with my iPad. I’m able to do 80% of all my holiday
shopping in less time than takes to find a parking space at
the mall. I haven’t written a physical check in over a decade
because I pay my bills online. And like every other red blooded
American male, I look forward to the day Debbie
Does Dallas is adapted into a VR
game. As sometime who vaguely recalls the dark days before there was
a microwave oven in every home, I'm reminded how wonderful it isto enjoy a piping hot burrito in only a minute or two and still
complain about how long it takes. The ways modern technology has
enhanced our lives is nearly boundless (though it has
taken some of the fun out of buying records).

Romero had it only half right.

Cell phones,
though? They haven’t enriched our lives in any meaningful way. They
haven’t advanced us as a species or rendered us more intelligent.
What they have done is
alter our behavior. Computers and tablets are wonderful, but still
essentially luxuries we could conceivably survive without. However,
we’ve made cell phones extensions of ourselves like vital
appendages. Many people feel as naked and helpless without one as
leaving the house without pants. Cell phones have turned
each of us into our own tiny island, oblivious to any part of the
world that isn’t presented as text or a grinning turd. In public
places where people congregate, you see legions of the Cellular Dead
shuffle about like zombies in the Monroeville Mall as they tap, tweet
and live life vicariously through a 3x5 screen.

With the possible exception of automobiles, cell
phones are also responsible for more deaths than any other device not
specifically built for the purpose of killing people. We’re so
entranced by their power that we’ve walked off cliffs, stepped in
front of trains and plowed into pedestrians during morning commutes.
People have died in house fires, drowned in rivers and been crushed
in trash compactors trying to rescue their phones. Wikipedia even has
an entire
page
listing notable selfie-related deaths since 2013 (it numbers in the
hundreds). Since humans have advanced to the point where we no longer
have natural enemies and can cure once-fatal diseases with a
quick inoculation, perhaps the cell phone is God’s last-ditch
attempt at culling the herd.

But there's a more horrific
depiction of the current zombie apocalypse brought on by the Cellular
Dead. The only difference is we don’t return from the grave to
feast on the living (though we certainly kill a shitload of 'em).
That’s the basic concept of Cell,
based on one of Stephen King’s better recent novels.

"When I said 'shoot the student body,' I meant pictures."

John
Cusack is Clay, a comic book artist arriving at an airport. During
the opening credits, nearly everyone around him is talking, texting
or taking selfies. Like the undead, they shuffle about the terminal by
the thousands, heads down and oblivious of others, all completely
absorbed in their own activity. The only reason Clay himself isn’t among them is
because his battery is dead. Then a malevolent cell phone signal
suddenly turns everyone using one into violent maniacs. This long,
bloody sequence is brutal and harrowing. Whether intentional or not,
the fact this signal turns nearly everybody into
monsters sends a strong message of how prolifically cell phones have
insinuated themselves in our daily lives.

Clay manages to
escape the mayhem, hooking up with Tom (Samuel L. Jackson), a former
soldier turned subway engineer. Along with a few others (some who
live, some who die), Clay heads off to try and save his son, whom
he’s convinced has survived unaffected (though I'm not sure why).
Meanwhile, those affected by the signal (“phoners”) begin to
evolve. No longer mindlessly homicidal, they become something
resembling Romeroesque zombies (you know...like real
cell phone junkies look). They gather and travel en masse, behaving
as a collective mind as if telepathically driven by some unknown
force (though they’ll still occasionally pause their journey to
slaughter any unaffected individual they run into).

The
first thirty minutes of Cell are
so intense that it’s a shame the rest of it plays like one of those
Walking Dead episodes
where the cast literally spends the entire episode walking.
Secondary characters arrive often, only to die long before we learn
much about them, though Stacy Keach appears in a memorable scene on a
college campus, where the group douses thousands of sleeping phoners
in gasoline before torching them to death. In addition, there are
some impressive scenes showing the massive, migrating zombie hordes
which remind me of every airport terminal I’ve ever visited.

"Say 'what' again! I dare you! I double dare you, motherf**ker!"

But Cell is ultimately a
missed opportunity. Despite my love for horror and much of Stephen
King's work, none of it is really all that scary. What really
would have been horrifying is if the entire opening airport slaughter
was simply triggered by everyone's service simultaneously shutting
off. No need for some mysterious signal to fry their
brains because I've seen firsthand what losing service does to some
poor bastards - including members of my own family. It turns them
into monsters, screeching like pod people from Invasion
of the Body Snatchers before going into a
trancelike state, shuffling like mindless zombies, no longer in
control of their own faculties because they're no longer connected.

It's
how I imagine our population would probably react if their precious
phones were simultaneously taken away. If the entire world was made
up of junkies and all the heroin suddenly disappeared, it's highly
unlikely they'd collectively shrug and sigh, "Oh well, it was
fun while it lasted."

Who
knows what atrocities the masses are capable of when denied something they
seem to value as much as food & water? Would they fight amongst
each other, or take out their rage on the few dozen hapless folks
(including yours truly) who never succumbed to the cell phone's
seductive siren song?Not that's fucking scary.

The Doll

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About D.M. Anderson

D.M. Anderson works and lives in Portland Oregon. He is the author of two young adult novels (Killer Cows & Shaken) and a collection of dark tales (With the Wicked). He has also published several short stories which have appeared (or will appear) in various anthologies and magazines such as 69 Flavors of Paranoia, Night Terrors, Trembles, Encounters, Implosion, Strange Fucking Stories, Perpetual Motion Machine. He documents his adventures in the dark onon his movie site, Free Kittens Movie Guide.